Liam Neeson is back in fine form with an old-school whodunnit packaged as an action thriller, Non-Stop. Fans of the over-the-top action style of Taken may wish it had more stunts and less Agatha Christie, but it’s a solid piece of entertainment. Here are five reasons it works:

1) The setup is grabby.

Neeson plays a down-at-heel federal air marshal with a bad attitude and a drinking problem (he takes a belt of whiskey before getting on the plane, then tries to order a gin and tonic when he’s on it) but a kindly way with children. It turns out he’s harboring one of those routine Deep Dark Movie Secrets, but his backstory does both make him easy to identify with and mark him with a possible red flag when, in the middle of a flight halfway across the Atlantic, he starts getting text messages informing him that someone on the plane is going to die every 20 minutes unless $150 million is wired into a specified bank account.

When people do indeed start dying — though none in a way that can be definitely tied to terrorism — air marshal Bill Marks discovers that security people on the ground have reason to believe he is the one hijacking the plane, for his own profit.

I thought it was a terrific movie and am disappointed that so many are apparently willing to forgo viewing it based on the opinions of reviewers. I saw no axes being ground and thoroughly enjoyed it as terrific action adventure.

I saw absolutely nothing sympathetic in the depiction of the wack-jobs that tried to take down the plane, making them complete outliers in their personae as military veterans. And that goes double for the one who’d lost a loved one on 9/11. So for me it failed utterly as liberal propaganda, if that was indeed its purpose--something I confess I very much doubt was part of the motive for making the movie.

On the other hand, representatives of the TSA bureaucracy, and by less than subtle inference, our entire Potemkin domestic security charade, with the glaring exception of our action hero, were clearly portrayed as almost universally clueless if not downright loathsome, an opinion I’d venture to say is shared by a huge majority of Americans.

I enjoyed both “Taken” movies although I thought they were needlessly lurid and graphic. This movie, however, sacrificed none of their riveting quality while being more tasteful and restrained. Since I think in addition to being a gifted actor, Neeson’s also a terrific antidote to all the chorus boy protagonists being shoved down our throats as de facto role models for what children should emulate, women want, and fish fear (to quote the T-shirt), I hope that this is the beginning of a trend and not a fluke.

It seems like it would take a lot of work to make sure there was "absolutely nothing sympathetic" about a child of someone killed on 9/11 and U.S. military veteran, but that does seem to be how Hollywood thinks these days.

"I saw absolutely nothing sympathetic in the depiction of the wack-jobs that tried to take down the plane, making them complete outliers in their personae as military veterans."

You miss the point. Ask yourself: Why does Hollywood once again make American soldiers (in this case veterans) the villains? Have you not noticed that, over and over, Hollywood tells us that Christians and conservatives are the dangerous fanatics, and yet in the real world the vast majority of terrorist acts are committed by muslims and leftists?

I won't see this movie. I'm so furious at the plot that I want to go stand in front of the theatre with a sign and steer people away. The utter corrupt sickness of casting a 9/11 survivor as a mass murderer leaves me speechless. Adding on the help of a war veteran who is willing to slaughter innocents? These people are sick and hateful. I despise them, and now I despise Liam Neeson too. He should have refused this job.

Regardless of the plot, I wouldn't go to a theater just to see a film. Movie theaters are Hollywood's version of Newspapers, in the Internet Age. Newspapers are just further along because the internet developed around printed word before it started streaming.

I'm predicting that movie theaters as we know them will disappear in a few years.

To be fair, Neeson never really came out as an action star until fairly late in his career. He was firmly in the "serious actor" column until Taken, which was filmed when he was in his 50s. He didn't become an action star until he was pretty long in the tooth, so he grew into it, while the others were growing out of it. His A-list appeal has always been worldly, grizzled and seasoned, compared to the swashbuckling bravado or hypermachismo of the other actors you mention. Look at Neeson in the 80s, in Excalibur or The Mission... or Schindler's List, for G-d's sake. He was hardly the action hero type early on.

"The terrorist is a 9/11 family member. Yes, you read that right; the terrorist is a 9/11 family-member who lost a loved-one in the World Trade Center on that terrible September morning.

It gets worse…

After 9/11, this 9/11 family member-turned-terrorist then joined the military but found himself disillusioned by the pointless wars. And now…

The 9/11 family member-turned-terrorist is upset because America hasn’t done enough to ensure there will never be another 9/11. And so he figures that if he can get an air marshal blamed for a terrorist attack, America will wake up and anally probe us before we’re allowed on a plane, or something.

It gets worse…

The villain’s sidekick is a member of the American military willing to murder 150 innocent people for a payday.

It gets worse…

The one passenger on the plane who is forever helpful, kind, reasonable, noble, and never under suspicion is a Muslim doctor dressed in traditional Muslim garb including a full beard.

Going by the stories so far on the plot points (crazed 9/11 victim's family member, only-in-it-for-the-money military guy, noble Muslim passenger) this sounds like the standard Hollywood story that thinks it's being cutting edge but actually is just using every stereotypical plot point Hollywood's used against Americans for the past 40 years (because they truly believe everyone who isn't as enlightened as them in flyover country is a potential crazed 9/11 victim's family member, and that anyone in the U.S. military would have no qualms about murdering hundreds of their own countrymen for a big payout).

My guess word-of-mouth on the storyline and who the bad guys are kills it at the box office next weekend.